Gloriously beautiful and tender.
Everything is completely new and unknown on the first day of human existence.
Eve’s first day finds her thankful and unafraid. Not even the “brilliant ball of yellow burning above” worries her. She notices a two-legged creature, who seems friendly and calls himself Adam. Together they give names to everything they see. Eve considers Adam’s ideas for names—“dog,” “cat,” “ant”—somewhat boring, while hers are more interesting: “nightingale” and “strawberry,” for instance. Perhaps it’s because God had some practice before he made her. Eve emerges as the more dominant of the two, but she finds Adam kind and beautiful. Relying on faith—and each other—the pair deal with the strangeness of everything, from rain to sundown and night to the miracle of sunrise on their second day. The familiar tale is told in the ancient Jewish tradition of midrash, a way of interpreting and enriching Bible stories. Kimmelman employs soaring, highly descriptive language imbued with gentle humor, imagination, wonder, and awe, brought to vivid life by Avgustinovich's lush artwork. The brown-skinned duo are nude but covered up by Eve’s thick black hair and, in Adam’s case, a strategically placed leaf. Never demanding belief or denying science, this is a fresh take on the oldest interpretation of the beginning. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Gloriously beautiful and tender. (author’s note) (Religious picture book. 4-9)Pub Date: Oct. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9781681156255
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Apples & Honey Press
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2023
A solid if message-driven conversation starter about the hard parts of learning.
Children realize their dreams one step at a time in this story about growth mindset.
A child crashes and damages a new bicycle on a dark, rainy day. Attempting a wheelie, the novice cyclist falls onto the sidewalk, grimacing, and, having internalized this setback as failure, vows to never ride again but to “walk…forever.” Then the unnamed protagonist happens upon a glowing orb in the forest, a “thought rearranger-er”—a luminous pink fairy called the Magical Yet. This Yet reminds the child of past accomplishments and encourages perseverance. The second-person rhyming couplets remind readers that mistakes are part of learning and that with patience and effort, children can achieve. Readers see the protagonist learn to ride the bike before a flash-forward shows the child as a capable college graduate confidently designing a sleek new bike. This book shines with diversity: racial, ethnic, ability, and gender. The gender-indeterminate protagonist has light brown skin and exuberant curly locks; Amid the bustling secondary cast, one child uses a prosthesis, and another wears hijab. At no point in the text is the Yet defined as a metaphor for a growth mindset; adults reading with younger children will likely need to clarify this abstract lesson. The artwork is powerful and detailed—pay special attention to the endpapers that progress to show the Yet at work.
A solid if message-driven conversation starter about the hard parts of learning. (Picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-368-02562-1
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion/LBYR
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of...
Rabe follows a young girl through her first 12 days of kindergarten in this book based on the familiar Christmas carol.
The typical firsts of school are here: riding the bus, making friends, sliding on the playground slide, counting, sorting shapes, laughing at lunch, painting, singing, reading, running, jumping rope, and going on a field trip. While the days are given ordinal numbers, the song skips the cardinal numbers in the verses, and the rhythm is sometimes off: “On the second day of kindergarten / I thought it was so cool / making lots of friends / and riding the bus to my school!” The narrator is a white brunette who wears either a tunic or a dress each day, making her pretty easy to differentiate from her classmates, a nice mix in terms of race; two students even sport glasses. The children in the ink, paint, and collage digital spreads show a variety of emotions, but most are happy to be at school, and the surroundings will be familiar to those who have made an orientation visit to their own schools.
While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of Kindergarten (2003), it basically gets the job done. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: June 21, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-234834-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
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